New 'Mixed' Language Discovered in Northern Australia

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A new language, one that combines elements of English with
traditional indigenous speech, has been discovered in northern
Australia, according to a new study.

The language, now known as Light Warlpiri, is spoken by
approximately 300 people in a remote desert community about 400
miles (644 kilometers) from Katherine, a town located in
Australia's Northern Territory, said Carmel O'Shannessy, a
professor in the department of linguistics at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. O'Shannessy documented the discovery of
Light Warlpiri in a study published online today (June 18) in the
journal Language.

Light Warlpiri is known as a "mixed language," because it blends
elements from multiple
languages : Traditional Warlpiri, which is spoken by about
6,000 people in indigenous communities scattered throughout the
Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory; Kriol, an English-based
Creole language spoken in various regions of Australia; and
English. [ 10
Things That Make Humans Special ]

"The striking thing about Light Warlpiri is that most of the
verbs come from English or Kriol, but most of the other
grammatical elements in the sentence come from Warlpiri,"
O'Shannessy told LiveScience.

In English, the order of words in a sentence generally indicates
the grammatical relationship between the various entities. For
example, in the sentence "Mary saw Jim," it is understood that
Mary is the one doing the seeing, because her name precedes the
verb. In the Warlpiri language, however, words can be placed in
any order, and grammatical interpretations are based on suffixes
that are attached to the nouns, O'Shannessy explained. Light
Warlpiri represents a mixture of these structural rules.

"In Light Warlpiri, you have one part of the language that mostly
comes from English and Kriol, but the other grammatical part, the
suffixing, comes from Warlpiri," O'Shannessy said.

Another innovation of the newfound language is a word form that
refers to both the present and past time, but not the future. For
example, in
English, "I'm" refers to "I" in the present tense, but Light
Warlpiri speakers created a new form, such as "yu-m," which means
"you" in the present and past time, but not the future. In other
words, this verbal auxiliary refers to the "non-future" time,
which is a word form that does not exist in English, Kriol or
traditional Warlpiri, O'Shannessy said.

"That structure doesn't exist in any of the languages that this
new code came from, which is one of the reasons we see this as a
separate
linguistic system, even though it comes from other languages
that already exist," she explained.

O'Shannessy first discovered Light Warlpiri when she began
working in a school in the Northern Territory where traditional
Warlpiri was being taught to children. She noticed that some of
the students appeared to
switch between several languages in conversation.

"After a while, I realized this switching took place in every
sentence, and I decided to investigate it," O'Shannessy said.
"Once I recorded children speaking, I looked at the patterns and
I could see that there were very striking systematic patterns. It
was then that I realized this was a system of its own."

The evolution of language

O'Shannessy thinks Light Warlpiri likely emerged in the 1970s and
1980s, when children went from switching between English, Kriol
and Warlpiri to speaking the mixed Light Warlpiri language on a
primary basis.

"It seems that the people who are about 35 years old are the ones
who created the system and brought in the innovation in the
verbal auxiliary," O'Shannessy said. "They then passed it on to
their children, and it will probably get passed on to subsequent
generations."

Mixed languages are not altogether uncommon throughout the world,
but the types of grammatical innovations seen with Light Warlpiri
are considered rare, O'Shannessy said.

Other examples of mixed languages include Gurindji Kriol, a blend
of Kriol and traditional Gurindji, which is spoken by communities
in Australia's Northern Territory; and Michif, which is spoken by
communities along the U.S.-Canada border, and combines verbal
structures from Cree, an Algonquin language, and noun structures
from Métis French, a type of Canadian French dialect.